The
Van Kampen Collection documents the aspects of the sixteenth century
most essential to scholars of the biblical text: the rekindling
of interest in the original languages, textual criticism, and the
resulting new vernacular translations. The Collection's array of
sixteenth-century books ranks second in importance only to its holdings
of fifteenth-century books. This area of the Collection may be considered
under two classifications.

The
first category for sixteenth-century books is comprised of first
editions of vernacular Bibles printed in countries in which the
Reformation triumphed. The holdings are particularly rich in English
Bibles, representing every version from Tyndale's New Testament
(second and fourth editions) and Pentateuch (first edition) to the
King James Bible (both "He" and "She" issues),
including Catholic editions. As an extension of the collection of
sixteenth-century English Bibles, a number of sixteenth-century
contraband pamphlets in English have been purchased, including the
first editions of works by John Frith and Miles Coverdale, and several
early editions of Tyndale's treatises. In all, the Collection contains
some sixty-five English titles from the sixteenth century.

VK
760, The Pentateuch, in English by W. Tyndale, Antwerp, 1530

Similar
publications in other Western European countries have become the
focus of collecting. The holdings of Dutch sixteenth-century Bibles
are swiftly becoming comparable to those in English, with the goal
of tracing the Dutch versions of the Bible from the incunable era
to the Staten Generaal edition of 1637. Sixteenth-century Bibles
from France and Germany are represented as well. The first printing
of the complete Bible in Spanish, printed in Basel by Samuel Apiarius
for Thomas Guarinus in 1569, is part of the Collection. The first
edition of the Luther Bible in Low German, printed by Hans Dietz
in 1533 (which is also the first printing of Luther's version of
both Testaments), is one of the more important sixteenth-century
German books in the Van Kampen Collection. It is complemented by
the 1522 Halberstadt Bible, the eighteenth and last German Bible
prior to Luther's translation, printed just months before the Septembertestament.

Another
focus is first-printings of the Bible in the vernacular languages
of the East, many of which were printed in Rome. The first publication
in Ethiopic was the New Testament in 1513 and, similarly, the first
Arabic New Testament was printed in Rome in 1590. The first Syriac
New Testament was printed in Vienna in 1555. Many of the sixteenth-century
holdings relate closely to manuscript versions in the Collection.

VK
399, The Complutensian Polyglot Bible, Alcalá, 1522

The
second category of sixteenth-century books in the Collection is
the publication of the first efforts toward critical editions of
the biblical text in original or ancient languages. In addition
to the holdings of the Eberhard Nestle Library in this area (see
Secondary Holdings), the Van Kampen
Collection has obtained a variety of sixteenth-century printed Bibles
in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, which reflect the work of numerous
editors and printers. Theories of textual criticism were only beginning
to be standardized at this time, and these editions are pertinent
to the Collection as a whole from the perspective of the manuscript
texts they reproduced, as well as the early critical methods they
demonstrate. Most prominent are the first three editions of Erasmus'
Greek and Latin New Testament, the publication responsible for both
subsequent vernacular versions and critical editions. The Collection
holds two of the three major polyglots of the sixteenth century,
the Complutensian (1522) and the Nuremberg (1599) Polyglots, as
well as the first polyglot edition ever published, the Genoa Polyglot
Psalter of 1516.